The carpenter accordingly carried the arm-chair into the Major’s apartment, while Mrs. Pilchers returned to “her lady.” The workman, to obtain as much light as possible, proceeded with the chair to the window, and placed it down on its side, the better to shorten the legs. He was in the act of opening his basket of tools, when hearing Mrs. Fokesell’s voice calling him from above stairs, he hastened away to learn what she desired. On reaching the drawing-room, the landlady requested the carpenter to bring his tools with him, saying that she wanted him to look to the lock of the cheffonier in the first floor, for that Baron de Boltzoff, the foreign gentleman who had her drawing-rooms, and was as mean as a Scotch pawnbroker, complained that the thing wouldn’t fasten properly, and had even lowered hisself to that degree to accuse her and the poor girl of pilfering his trumpery tea and sugar, confessing that he actually counted the lumps, and marked where the gunpowder stood in the caddy in black-lead pencil. Mrs. Fokesell then told the man she should like him to cobble the lock up somehow, but not to put her to any expense about it, as it was only an old rickety affair that she had picked up in Brokers’-row cheap, and to make it lock at all fast it must have a new bolt put to it, she knew, but that was more than she could afford to have done to the thing. All she wanted was just to keep the gentleman quiet by letting him see she had had it attended to. The carpenter having hastened down stairs again for his basket of tools, hurried off, as requested, to the drawing-rooms for a short while, leaving Mrs. Quinine’s arm-chair lying on its side in front of the parlour window, as he had placed it. The man had scarcely quitted the parlour of Major Oldschool, when that gentleman returned, admiring the unusually delicate appearance of his hands, as he entered the room. The first thing that struck his attention, after having taken off his gloves, and placed them carefully on the brim of his hat, in readiness against the coming of the Sandboys family, was the “strange chair” lying on its side by the front window of his apartment. “Bless my soul!—how extraordinary! Who on earth could have brought this thing here?—and whatever could they have been doing, for it to get thrown down on its side in this manner? It’s very odd,—very odd, indeed!” exclaimed the Major, as he stood for a minute or two, eyeing it suspiciously behind his glasses. But, nothing resulting from his profound reflections, Major Oldschool lifted up the chair from its recumbent position, and having placed it on its legs, sat himself down in it to try what kind of accommodation it might afford a gentleman of his “build.”